


Angels

by BarbaraKaterina



Series: Good Omens-ey Explorations [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: BAMF Crowley (Good Omens), M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Softie Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 08:23:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20404645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarbaraKaterina/pseuds/BarbaraKaterina
Summary: Crowley wasn't always Crowley, but love had always been his biggest weakness.Or, about an angel, his Fall, and his feelings thereon.(This fic is a standalone. The series is mostly to organise my fics. This is only marginally the same verse as the other stories.)





	Angels

**Author's Note:**

> This is a mix of show and book verse. Crowley’s characterization is very much from the show, but the stuff around Apocalypse follows the book canon more, including quoting it at one point.
> 
> Most of it has been sitting among my WIPs for over a month, but I didn't know how it ended. And then I reread the book apocalypse scene, and suddenly I did.
> 
> This story would ideally be called "Prestiž clasy co stojej za vyližprdel", only that's a) in Czech, b) really not pg-13, and c) an inside joke only two other people in the world would get, and one of them only if he has an exceptionally good memory. To elucidate it a little, though, the angelic hierarchy used in this story comes from (pseudo) Dionysius Areopagita, whose description of Heaven is rather reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons' Manual of the Planes. One of the defining characteristics of that manual is that its prestige classes are worth shit, which, really, could be said about Areopagita's work too. It's also what the above sentence in Czech says, only in Czech it's literally "worth an ass licking", which for some reason apparently is a bad thing? Anyway, I'm sure Crowley and Aziraphale get to that point in their relationship quite soon after the end of this story, so the name seemed fitting, but for the aforementioned reasons, I went with "Angels" instead.

"Why did you suggest Alpha Centauri, of all places?" Aziraphale asks him one day when they sit together and talk over what happened during the Armageddon.

Crowley shrugs. "It's always been my favourite." 

Aziraphale frowns a little in confusion. "Favourite what, place ?" 

"Favourite star," Crowley corrects.

"You know enough about stars to have a favourite?" Aziraphale asks suspiciously. 

Crowley smiles, and tries not to make it too sad. 

-

Crawly was just keeping to the side, watching Adam for opportunities to make trouble, when he spotted Raziel descending from Heaven not too far away. 

Wary but curious, he slithered closer. 

It didn't take the cherub long to notice him.

He gulped, or did the cherubic equivalent of gulping, anyway. "Ko-" He started. 

Crawly morphed into his human form solely for the purpose of putting up his hand. "Not any more," he said. 

"Right." Raziel nodded several times, and stood there awkwardly for a moment. 

Crawly thought rather longingly of the East Gate Angel, who, having no idea who Crawly was, was a much more bearable company. 

"Why are you here?" He prompted. 

"Er. Well Adam's been really regretful lately, but of course we can't let him back in… That is, er…" 

Crawly waved at him to continue. He knew perfectly well there was no going back once you were thrown out. He'd come to terms with that rather quickly, all things considered.

"Well. Anyway, so as a reward for his repentance, I was sent to, you know. Teach him, about stars and stuff." Raziel frowned. "Seems rather redundant given that you are here. I mean, what could I possibly teach him that you couldn't?" 

"Don't put yourself down," Crawly said kindly. "You're a cherub, after all. Famed for your knowledge and all that." 

"Yes, and you are-" 

"Not any more," Crawly repeated. 

"You still know heaps more about these things than I do,” Raziel insisted. “By the Lord, you taught me everything I know! You'd be much better at this than me." 

"Don't let Upstairs hear you talk like that," Crawly said mildly. 

Raziel grimaced. "Do you know who's running things now?" He asked after a moment.

Crawly shook his head, actually curious. Which of his colleagues had taken Lucifer's place? Probably another cherub. After all, there was a reason why it had not been one of the seraphim before. They were not, by their nature, particularly suited to running anything.

"Gabriel," Raziel said grimly. 

"Gab-?!" Crawly choked, and then stared. "That two-bit archangel ?" He finally asked, when Raziel showed no signs of telling him he’d been joking. "Are you joking?" 

"Unfortunately not." Raziel said grimly. 

"But why?" Incomprehension was not a strong enough word for this.

Raziel seemed to hesitate, and sort of surreptitiously look around, which was ridiculous, since Heaven could certainly hear you without becoming visible.

Or. Well. They could have when Lucifer had still been running things there. Under Gabriel’s rule, who knew?

"Well,” Raziel began, having verified there were no heavenly agents nearby, “you know best how many cherubim went with you." 

Crawly did. It was a lot. Lucifer had always been all about leading by example, and they were his own people after all. Plus, that propensity for knowledge...it led you to asking uncomfortable questions, and Lucifer knew just how to make use of that.

"The few of us who remained would hardly have been trusted with anything,” Raziel said plainly, and Crawly gave him an apologetic look, which Raziel seemed unsure what to do with. “As for the Thrones, they were generally rather...disconsolate, after you all...left. Not fit to rule anything, that’s for sure.”

Well, Crawly reflected, that must have been a first for them. "There's still the whole of the second sphere!" He pointed out. Then he hesitated, because that probably wouldn’t have been such a great idea.

“Yes, precisely,” Raziel said, replying to the expression on his face rather than to his words. “Can you even imagine?”

"Surely there was a nice Principality somewhere!” Crawly said, getting a bit desperate now. “That Eastern Gate angel, for example, he looked quite sane!" 

Raziel gave him a look. "The first thing he did was giving away his flaming sword to the humans." 

Crawly grinned at him. "Like I said, sane." 

Raziel muttered something that sounded rather suspiciously like ‘that’s the seraphim for you’ under his nonexistent breath, but it was just quiet enough that Crawly couldn’t call him out on it. Aloud, the cherub said: "Maybe, but is he really the sort you want running anything?”

"Wouldn't be worse than Gabriel,” Crawly pointed out.

Raziel wisely left that without a comment.

-

“Are you still nervous about the Arrangement, angel?” Crowley asked at some point in the 13th century, when he noticed him fretting.

“Yes!” Aziraphale said, sounding irritated Crowley even had to ask. “What if Heaven finds out?”

Crowley snorted. “Heaven is ran by incompetent fools,” he declared.

“I beg your pardon!” Aziraphale protested, puffing up.

“Well, they haven't noticed you doing temptations for centuries now, have they? What else do you want me to call that?” Crowley asked pointedly.

“It’s not like Hell is doing better with your blessings!” Aziraphale retorted.

Crowley stayed silent, because if he wanted to answer, what he would have to say was: Oh, Lucifer knew. They knew perfectly well.

They were just hedging their bets...or bidding their time.

-

"This is truly astonishing," Lucifer said, looking at Kokabiel's work. "When She mentioned stars, I didn't imagine them being that impressive. What gave you the idea of doing them like that?" 

Kokabiel, who’d literally invented being suave, fought the angelic equivalent of a blush and said: "Well, sort of… you." 

Lucifer's smile became very pleased indeed. "Oh?" They said. "Do tell me more." 

"Well, you're very… radiant,” Kokabiel began to explain a little haltingly. “So I was thinking, if I could get some of that into them, that would make them so much more interesting than the original designs. You know, little dim lights in the sky kind of thing.”

Lucifer raised their eyebrow at him. “And She just let you alter Her plans?”

“Weeell, not exactly,” Kokabiel said evasively.

The other Lucifer’s eyebrow joined the first. “You went against her will?” He asked.

“No! Of course not. No.” Kokabiel considered repeating it several more times, just so that it was clear to absolutely everyone that he would never as much as consider any such thing, but Lucifer gave him an impatient look, so he decided to get on with it: “I went to Her and sort of pitched Her my idea, and She liked it, I guess. I mean, they’ll still look like little dim lights from Earth, when all is said and done, but She agreed with me that this’ll give them a bit more depth. In fact, She told me it gave her some ideas for the whole structure of the universe thing.”

Lucifer looked very interested indeed, which was more flattering than it should have been, really. Hadn’t Kokabiel been _just_ talking about how he’d even impressed the Almighty with his ideas?

But then, he always sort of suspected She was just kind to everyone. It had probably been like this in Her plan from the very beginning, and She was just too nice to say. Lucifer, on the other hand...Kokabiel knew for an absolute fact they were _not_ nice to everyone. They were, in fact, _very_ selective in their company. A compliment from them...well, that was really something you knew you’d earned.

“I’m especially happy with this one,” Kokabiel said, unable to stop himself, and pointing out one of his best creations. “It will be visible every morning if I read the designs right, so I did it a little differently and took special care to...that is, I was most inspired by you here, I think." He tried not to look at his feet too obviously, but probably failed. Oh well.

Lucifer, at least, didn’t seem to mind. In fact, the satisfaction in their smile deepened. "A morning star. I like it. I like _you_, Kokabiel." 

The smile that accompanied those words was really more alluring than any angel’s smile had any right to be, but having experience with nothing but angels and Her, Kokabiel had no framework for such a judgement, and so the smile simply stood out to him, and he remembered it, and the sentence it had accompanied, for a very long time. After all, when Lucifer told you something like that, it was very hard to forget.

-

"So, where _did_ you learn about stars?" Aziraphale insists when Crowley is quiet for too long.

“At the very source,” Crowley replied after some hesitation.

Aziraphale brightens. “Really?” Then he hesitates. “Of course, you need not talk about this if you do not wish to. I wouldn’t want to bring up painful memories. Just, you know, if you were willing...I would love to hear.”

-

It was after the flood, and after Crawly was done mourning for all those dead people, and wondering what the hell happened to Heaven - because he could never believe this one actually came from the Almighty herself. He might have ended up turning his back on Her, but he didn’t think She was a _monster_.

Gabriel, on the other hand, was just incompetent and arrogant enough for something like that.

In any case, now the Flood was over and there was an arc of coloured lights in the sky, and Crawly was contemplating it with a bit of a frown.

“Really,” he said under his breath, “is that all?”

“I know, right?” The messenger Hell had sent after him with new ‘orders’ agreed. “As a compensation for killing thousands of people, it’s not much.”

“Well, it’s not like anything would have really been adequate, to be fair,” Crawly pointed out.

The messenger gave him a look out of the corner of her eye. “That. Er. That doesn’t seem a very demonic view to take,” she said carefully.

Crawly gave her an amused look. “Did Lucifer send you up here to report on me?”

She blushed to the roots of her hair. “I didn’t have any choice!” She immediately defended herself.

Crawly only hummed.

“They seem to be...worried about you,” the little demon suggested, and Crawly thought a little wistfully of the days he would have assumed that meant Lucifer cared if he was well and comfortable.

“I know,” he said now, with a provocative smile. And he did know. Lucifer worried constantly - about Crawly’s possible attempt to take the rule of Hell from them. This was the reason why they’d sent Crawly to Earth in the first place, to get rid of the only potential competition.

One would think that they’d remember, from their time in Heaven, that seraphim had no interest in ruling anything, and for all he insisted he wasn’t that any more, some things remained the same. Crawly was absolutely comfortable with the arrangement as it stood. The further he was from Lucifer the better, really.

He turned his eyes back to the rainbow. “I wonder who they had make it,” he muttered under his breath. “I’d hope it was Raziel at least, but looking at this, I’m not so sure.”

“What would you have changed, if you could?” The messenger asked curiously.

Crawly thought about the likelihood of this going into a report on him as well, and decided he didn’t care. “Well,” he began, “the colours should be much brighter, to begin with…”

-

The next time they met after the Flood was in Ur, and Aziraphale avoided Crawly.

He let him, not interfering, until one day he entered a pub only to find the angel drunk on Sumerian beer.

“Crawly!” He called loudly when he saw him, in a despondent voice. “Will you forgive me?”

“Forgive you what?” Crawly asked, confused.

“I let the children drown,” Aziraphale announced mournfully.

Noticing the stares, Crawly made sure the people around them paid them no attention before he sat down next to the angel.

“I couldn’t interfere, I couldn’t!” Aziraphale repeated with a sort of desperation. “I have to stay loyal to the Almighty, tell me you understand that...I cannot Fall...loyalty is very important, you know?”

“Yes,” Crawly said heavily, letting the angel drape an arm around his shoulder as he gave him an entreating look. “I know.”

-

“It’s a shame, darling,” Lucifer – no, the Morning Star, they’d actually taken on the name, and nothing could make Kokabiel prouder – said, trailing a finger up his arm(1), “that your beautiful creations were reduced to such distant lights.”

Kokabiel shrugged. “The Almighty explained that if they were too close, they’d hurt the humans’ eyes.”

“Hmm. A shame, then, that She didn’t design them with better eyes, isn’t it?”

Kokabiel shrugged. “I’m sure She had her reasons.”

The Morning Star pouted a little. “You’re very loyal, aren’t you?” They said. “Are you this loyal to me, I wonder?”

Kokabiel gulped. “I- yes, you know I am.”

“But I really know nothing of the sort, darling. Oh, you like me, I know that well enough.” They smiled. “But then, everyone does.”

That was certainly true enough. Kokabiel never stopped being thankful for being singled out in the Morning Star’s attention.

“What I wonder about is, would you stand by me, if I needed you to?”

“Yes,” Kokabiel said immediately. “I would, I promise.”

“Promise, do you?” They wrapped their arms around his neck. “Do you give me your angelic word?”

Kokabiel did, without the slightest hesitation.

After all, the Morning Star was the brightest angel of all Heaven, and whoever dared to stand against Them, Kokabiel was sure. They would deserve what they got.

-

“Did you know any of the cherubim who worked on the stars?” Aziraphale prods him when Crowley doesn’t start talking. “Or...or even some of the seraphim?”

At the word, Crowley cannot help but flinch, and Aziraphale immediately gives him an apologetic smile. 

"I'm sorry, my dear," he says. "I shouldn't pry."

"No," Crowley assures him a little hoarsely, "it's fine." 

-

Crawly felt a sort of vague sadness inside as he watched Cain murder Abel. Taking the apple, well, that had been one thing. But this...this reminded him of Hell too much, and he had hoped humans could avoid this at least.

With a sigh, he made himself visible as he came up to Cain, suggesting ways to try and get himself out of trouble, excuses to use. He was tired, though. He’d only been on Earth a few years, and he was already tired.

When the whole matter with Cain was done and he was punished, Crawly returned to the shade of the tree he’d sat in before, only to see a seraph there already.

It was Tsebiel, one of Crawly’s nearest and dearest from before, and for a moment Crawly could not breathe.

“How can you stand this?” They asked him without preamble.

Crawly stayed silent, not knowing what to say.

“I spoke to Raziel, you know,” Tsebiel continued. “He told me you were still...well, you. They it wasn’t like with some of those others, who seemed to have become entirely different people, and who it seems were only wearing masks of decency until recently. But you...if it’s not like this for you, how can you stand fulfilling orders like this?”

“Cain killing his brother wasn’t my work,” Crowley said quietly. “He came up with that one all on his own.”

“And you just stood by and watched?” Tsebiel asked incredulously.

Crawly sighed. “I don’t want to start another war,” he said quietly.

Tsebiel gave him an uncomprehending look.

“There’s a careful balance now,” Crawly elaborated. “Hell doesn’t give me any orders they know I’d find too distasteful, and I don’t do anything to go too much against them. It...works, in a way. The moment it’s broken...Lucifer will attack me if they get the smallest hint of rebellion from me, I know they will, and...some of them might pick my side.”

“So what?”

“Tsebiel...I know you only see Beelzebub and others like him, and Lucifer themselves of course, but there’s a lot of them who were simply seduced by Lucifer.”

“Like you?” Tsebiel asked plainly.

Crawly sighed. “Yes, like me, but they were just poor angels or archangels or something, with much more of an excuse than I had. They didn’t know what they were doing. And some of them like me. I can’t...do you know what Lucifer would do to them?”

“I have a pretty good idea,” Tsebiel replied.

“Then you see why I can’t...I have to keep this balance. I can’t risk an open conflict with Lucifer.”

Tsebiel only shook their head.

“Please, you must understand!” Crowley said a little desperately.

“I do,” Tsebiel assured him. “But I can’t...this is too much, too much pain and compromise and…" They shuddered. "After you were cast out, most seraphim...retreated,” he said carefully.

“Retreated? What does it mean?” Crawly asked in spite of himself.

“From Heavenly life," Tsebiel elaborated. "We spend our time with the Almighty now, around Her. We are...too disappointed in fellow angels. But I wanted to talk to you, to see...but this is too much for me. I need to go back.” There was a short silence, and then with emphasis, Tsebiel said: “Goodbye.”

Crawly simply nodded, too choked up to say a word, and watched them go. 

He’d never thought he could ever hate anyone, but in that moment, he hated Lucifer with all of his being.

-

“This isn’t Armageddon,” Crowley said, alarmed. “This is _personal_.” 

Everything he’d been afraid of for thousands of years was coming to head now, and he had no way to stop it.

He had known there was a danger of this when he set out to counter the Apocalypse, of course, but he’d hoped that if he limited himself to just gentle influences, just nudging the events a little, it wouldn’t be enough to provoke Lucifer.

Well.

He had clearly been wrong, and he was terrified.

“There are humans here,” Aziraphale told him.

“Yes, and _me_,” Crowley said pointedly, in case his previous announcement had not made it clear who Lucifer was after.

“I mean we shouldn’t let this happen to them,” Aziraphale explained patiently.

“Well, what-” Crowley began.

“I mean, when you think about it, we’ve got them into enough trouble as it is. You and me. Over the years. What with one thing and another.”

“We were only doing our jobs,” Crowley muttered distractedy, worried about where this conversation was heading.

“Yes. So what? Lots of people in history have only done their jobs and look at the trouble _they_ caused.”

Crowley wondered, a little hysterically, if they’d had to worry about starting a war in Hell if they stopped doing their jobs.

“You don’t mean we should actually try to stop _him_?” He asked in an unnaturally high voice.

“What have you got to lose?”

Crowley thought about it. He thought about the odds of some of the demons that liked him coming to his rescue if he didn’t try to defend himself, versus the chances of them coming if he fought. He thought about Aziraphale, and the humans, and Adam, and realized that really, he had nothing to lose.

Whatever happened, there was nothing he could do to make it end well.

With an ironic smile, he felt for a tyre iron under his seat.

If he was going to give Lucifer the fight he had always wanted, he could at least look suitably ridiculous while doing it. He would not give him the honour of a serious weapon.

He thought grimly of those early days after the Fall, when the ‘darlings’ had gradually turned more obviously ironic and mocking, and when he’d realized what had actually happened.

Of all that anger he had bottled up then, trying to prevent what was happening now.

He thought of Tsebiel walking away from him.

He straightened, let his wings come out, and prepared to fight.

-

And then, of course, Adam interfered.

-

Crowley tells Aziraphale about the stars.

Aziraphale stays silent the whole time, something that has never before happened, and then, even more alarmingly, quite a long while after Crowley finishes.

“You were in the highest sphere, were you not?” He asks quietly when he finally speaks.

Crowley supposes there was no avoiding him making the connection, even though he had carefully edited out any mention of that. “Yes,” he confirms hesitantly.

“Were you a cherub?” Aziraphale asks.

Crowley desperately wants to lie, to say that yes, cherub, that was him.

But he feels that he can’t do that, can’t deceive his angel any more, and besides, when has he ever cared about knowledge?

“No,” he whispers.

Aziraphale’s eyes widen and his mouth opens. “I thought...I thought none of the seraphim Fell,” he says after a moment.

“Just one,” Crowley replies.

“But why?” Azirapahle asks, sounding a little desperate now, and so Crowley tells him that too.

By the end of the story, Aziraphale is trembling as he embraces Crowley, repeating ‘I am sorry’ as if he had any part in it.

“Why are you apologizing?” Crowley finally asks.

“For all those centuries, I thought you were trying to tempt me to Fall, and meanwhile you-”

“I know, angel,” Crowley says quietly. “I know.”

And he does. Apart from starting a war with Lucifer, this has been his biggest fear for most of his life, that he would become to Aziraphale - even if unwittingly - what the Morning Star had been to him.

And now he has an angel in his arms, and he is afraid again.

“Are you sure?” He asks.

“Yes,” Aziraphale says firmly. “I am sure, because you are asking.”

And then he kisses Crowley, and for the first time in his long life, the demon doesn’t regret Falling.

**Author's Note:**

> 1: His metaphorical finger up his metaphorical arm. They were incorporeal angels, but they still had non-verbal communication. It’s hard to explain in human language, all right?
> 
> -
> 
> On the decision of making Crowley a seraph, which I’ve only seen used by one author so far: seraphim means something like snake, so there’s that. Also, with the Serpent of Eden, the general implication is he was Satan himself, so I thought having him be someone powerful was fitting. The same applies when it comes to tempting Jesus. It goes well with this story that some people would actually consider _him_ the biggest demonic figure (Lucifer was always generally considered to be a cherub by theologians, precisely because it was assumed seraphim couldn’t Fall, so he got the next highest rank), and so it would get confused in the narratives.
> 
> Also also, in the books Crowley falls for asking too many questions, which is a more cherub-like motivation – knowledge and all that. But on the show he talks about keeping bad company, which sounds way more seraph-like to me – being focused on love. Even more generally, show!Crowley isn't much about knowledge, but is all about love. 
> 
> Just imagine the Heaven in this verse: seraphim, the angels responsible for love, retreating from Heaven, and most of cherubim, those responsible for knowledge, Falling, and the rest not being trusted...No wonder Heaven ended up the way it did.
> 
> As for the rest of angelic/demonic cast here, I don’t like the idea of Crowley and Aziraphale being literally the only good ones among their people, because honestly. There are literal hosts of angels and demons. They might eb special snowflakes, but they’re not that much of special snowflakes. Not even Crowley the Only Fallen Seraph. Raziel is a real angel (for a given value of real, obviously) who was supposed to teach Adam about stars in the Enochian tradition. The rest I made up.
> 
> The name Kokabiel is not out of my head either. He’s called the “angel of stars” and is ackowledges as one of the Fallen in the Book of Enoch. I tried not to give Crowley an angelic name of anyone associated with doing anything particular with humans, because he Fell before that, but well. “Angel of the Stars” was too good to pass up on, so you get Kokabiel, who is only said to have Fallen when the whole Nephilim mess happened.


End file.
